Huawei Technologies introduced its Mate 90 smartphone series on Thursday, relying on its own operating system and a redesigned chip architecture to stay competitive despite U.S. restrictions on advanced semiconductor shipments.
Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business, told reporters Tuesday before the launch that the company still faces limits on advanced chip supply.
"Advanced semiconductor capacity remains very limited in China, and Huawei's Ascend AI chips also draw on that same capacity," Yu said. "The capacity for smartphone chips remains tight, even though rising smartphone prices have curbed shipment volumes."
The launch tests whether Huawei can keep improving its phones despite U.S. restrictions that have cut off its access to cutting-edge chipmaking tools. That has forced Huawei to find new ways to boost processor performance.
The Mate 90 series follows the Mate 80 line, which launched in November 2025. Premium models, including the Mate 90 Pro Max, run on Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro chip, built with a technique Huawei calls "LogicFolding."
The method rearranges a chip's internal wiring in three dimensions instead of the usual flat layout, allowing for denser, faster processing. But it requires more wafers to produce.
Eric Xu, Huawei's rotating chairman, said at a media event in Shanghai last month that supply of the company's Ascend 950 AI chips cannot meet domestic demand because of capacity limits.
Yu said China's advanced chipmaking still depends on deep ultraviolet lithography machines. He said extreme ultraviolet technology is "valuable," but Chinese manufacturers are still working toward it.
Yu said Huawei would use more LogicFolding chips in future smartphones.
Huawei did not say who makes the Kirin 9050 Pro. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's top logic foundry, is widely believed to produce the Kirin chips used in Huawei's Mate series and its Ascend AI processors. SMIC did not respond to a request for comment.
Huawei's latest phones run on HarmonyOS 7, the company's homegrown, Android-free operating system. Huawei says it supports more than 450,000 apps and services. The company has not yet revealed a target price for the Mate 90 series.
Higher Prices for Handsets
Chinese smartphone makers are dealing with rising memory and component costs, pushing them to raise prices and ship more premium models.
Yu said rising memory prices have added an average of $200 to the cost of each handset, hurting Huawei's profit margins.
"We have to increase prices as well, yet at a slower pace," Yu said.
China's domestic smartphone shipments fell 7% year-on-year between January and August, even as Huawei's shipments in the country rose 13%, according to research firm International Data Corp.
The average selling price of smartphones in China climbed 11.3% year-on-year in the second quarter to $543, while the average price of Huawei smartphones declined 14.7% to $628, IDC data showed.
Apple vs. Huawei in Foldables
Apple announced its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, last month, entering a category long dominated by Samsung Electronics and Chinese rivals such as Huawei.
Yu said he welcomes Apple's entry into the market.
"I am very pleased to see the launch of a similar product by our peers," Yu said.
Huawei currently holds about a 75% share of China's foldable phone market, he said.
"Between September 10 and 13, our Pura X Max foldable phone sales shot up 76% week-on-week right after Apple Duo's launch," Yu said. He added that shipments of the Pura X Max, which is similar in size to the iPhone Duo, have topped 1.2 million units in China since its April release.
Apple is expected to ship 6 million iPhone Duo units in 2026, with China, the world's largest market for foldable phones, accounting for nearly a quarter of that total, according to Counterpoint Research.
